I Suck At Home Improvement

My friend (Carlos) stopped by on Saturday. Knowing that I was still in the midst of working on renovating the bathroom on the first floor, he offered to help. Naturally, I suck at home improvement. So I gladly took Carlos up on his offer.

Of course, if the home improvement project involved getting absolutely dirty, then I would most likely not take Carlos or any of my other friends up on their offers to help. I would feel pretty badly asking a friend to get covered in dirt... unless that friend were a buxom blonde and the dirt were mud. Just kidding.

In case anyone is curious, I find plumbing to be very dirty. Even when you clean the pipes to solder them together... it's dirty. Luckily for Carlos, I had finished most of the plumbing for the first floor bathroom. (I still have to tie the drain in to our existing system, which requires getting dirty in the crawlspace.)

Anyway, apparently Carlos is new to the whole working-on-the-house thing. Home renovations had never interested him. So it meant a lot to me for Carlos to offer his help for a home improvement project. Hopefully I did not scare him away from future home improvement projects.

After all, Karen... and probably some of my friends... think I'm ridiculously anal when it comes to home improvement projects. In my defense, it's not about being particular about things. Like Mike Holmes from television would say, It's about making it right the first time so that you don't have to come back and fix it at a later time.

Needless to say, with it being Carlos's first time doing a home improvement project, I had him start with the simple things: insulation. While Carlos insulated the walls with the environmentally friendly denim insulation, I was measuring and cutting the drywall boards used for the walls.

I think the highlight of the day was seeing Carlos's amazement when we actually installing the drywall. Carlos had doubts about how we would install the drywall over the plumbing pipes that stuck out from the wall. Needless to say, with some fancy math, I was able to drill precise holes for the pipes.

In my resourcefulness, I also used some makeup to help outline the location of the pipes. In case anyone is curious, the makeup was not Karen's (because she doesn't wear any). And in case anyone is still curious, the makeup was definitely not mine. The makeup was a leftover from the second photo scavenger hunt that I organized. The makeup was used to make our team look like the members of KISS. (Yes, we were part of the KISS army for one brief moment of time.)

Regardless, seeing Carlos's surprise when the piece of drywall went in was memorable. His amazement almost made me feel like I knew what I was doing. Carlos and I eventually ended up installing drywall for the entire wall.

All in all, Carlos did a good job for his first time doing a home improvement project. I'm glad that he offered to help out. I haven't really hung out much with Carlos of late, so it was definitely good to see him. Plus, it turns out that Carlos is now a big fan of Freschetta pizza after we had some during lunch. Having never had Freschetta frozen pizza beforehand, Carlos absolutely raved about the taste. Who knew?

Anyway, thanks again Carlos for the help.